The China Governess (34 page)

Miss Aicheson turned in her path to appeal to authority and Nanny Broome, who was supporting Miss Kinnit, paused hopefully.

Stockwell was interested and as Tim and Julia went on alone they heard him talking eagerly behind them.

‘You mean the man who broke in? He went for her, did he? Did he actually touch her?'

‘He did, dear, didn't he?'

‘Oh yes Aich, of course, I told you. He saw me and hit out. He was frightened, I think.'

‘I expect you were frightened too, miss.' The sergeant aimed to comfort. ‘He's an ugly young brute. Just show me where you were and tell me exactly what he did.'

Tim and Julia passed out of earshot. The drawing-room door stood open and the pink light streamed out into the gloom.

‘Are you worrying about him?' Julia drew the boy aside for a moment and they stood close together whispering, leaning over the heavy oak balustrade which ran round the stairwell.

‘No, but they can't charge him for something he hasn't done. He's broken in and he's almost certainly responsible for Nan's coat and for socking Alison, but they can't say that he's to blame for poor old Basil's condition. Whatever that may be.'

‘No, of course not. I wasn't accusing you. I was just asking.'

‘Oh! blast everybody.' He turned and kissed her ear, pressing
his face for a moment into her warm soft hair. ‘What did you do with that horror glove?'

‘Hid it. It's in the oven at the back of the mock fireplace. Aren't you going to tell them about it?'

‘I'm not going to rush at them with it.'

‘Tim! Oh darling! You
can't
feel responsible for him.'

‘Why not? He's our age and I caught him.'

‘I see.' She was silent for a moment or two and then turned to face him. ‘Did you hear Nanny Broome say that Miss Saxon looked like Basil does?'

‘Yes I did.'

‘What are we going to do?'

‘What can we do? Nothing. We're not in that at all. The Basil business appears to be entirely the older generation's headache. That's the only thing we do know about it. Come along, Sweetie.'

They went on into the drawing-room to find Eustace standing on the hearthrug before the cacti collection. Councillor Cornish was in a chair on the opposite side of the room, his back was bent, and his long arms were drooping. He still wore his hideous raincoat and his black hat was on the floor beside him.

Eustace hailed Tim with relief. ‘Oh, there you are, my boy!' he said heartily. ‘How is Basil? It's not as bad as it looks, is it? He'll come round, I mean? Please God! What a frightful accident to happen! Where were you when all this was going on?'

‘Julia and I were in the Well-cellar catching that chap who came in through the broken window. He took the glass out this afternoon, apparently.'

Eustace's kindly face became amazed. He had recovered from his initial shock and his wits were about him again.

‘Be discreet, Tim,' he murmured and glanced down at the room towards the Councillor, who was rising as Julia crossed over to him. ‘I don't think it could have occurred quite like that, you know. No human being could get through those bars for one thing. Doubtless he was about the house before you found him.'

‘He wasn't.' Tim was gentle but adamant. ‘We were in the kitchen and he couldn't have reached the cellar from the house
without disturbing us. He could get through the bars all right. He could get through a keyhole. Have you seen him?'

‘Yes, I have. He and a plain-clothes detective and a pleasant young man who seems to be some sort of welfare officer are all in the dining-room.' Eustace hesitated and presently led the younger man into the window alcove. ‘It's Cornish's boy, apparently,' he said softly. ‘There's been trouble before, I understand.' He sighed. ‘An extraordinary coincidence, don't you think? Just after he was able to help us this morning? I don't mind telling you I'm wondering about that fire. Let's go over. I don't know what your little Julia is telling him about the cellar. We don't want to raise his hopes, poor man.'

As they came up to the two they caught the tail end of an earnest and intimate conversation.

‘I hoped so hard you'd go to Mr. Luke.' Julia's voice was as clear as a bird's. ‘I'm so relieved. As soon as I heard he'd sent for Nanny Broome I knew that you must have.'

‘My dear, be quiet.' said the Councillor. He was a gaunt figure in agony. There was no mistaking his helpless misery. He turned to Timothy and spoke doggedly.

‘You didn't hurt him,' he said. ‘I'm most grateful you didn't hurt him. Do I understand that he is responsible for something quite terrible upstairs?'

‘No, sir. He has done nothing at all since he got into the house except talk to me.'

With exactly the same doggedness Tim was disregarding Eustace's frantic pressure on his arm. ‘Julia and I saw the light from his torch when he got into the Well-cellar and after that we didn't let him out of our sight. When we heard the commotion and came up to investigate I brought him with me. We went into Basil Toberman's room together.'

‘Basil Toberman? Is that the man who was murdered?'

As the question escaped the Councillor, Eustace made an ineffectual gesture of rejection and drew a long whistling breath. It was as if he had been listening for the word and when it came he had no resistance to offer. He dropped into the nearest chair and sat there like a sack. ‘Is he dead?' he demanded.

‘I don't know, Uncle.'

‘I didn't realize there was any doubt of that.' Cornish was both apologetic and deeply relieved. ‘I was misled by something I heard one plain-clothes man tell the other.'

Eustace looked up at Timothy. ‘It'll be the end of us if he does die and there's any sort of mystery about it,' he said gravely. ‘That scene at supper tonight and everything the stupid fellow has been saying to God knows who on the aeroplane, it'll all come out. All over the newspapers, everywhere, and that will be a quarter of the damage. Once the old stag goes down, you know, the hounds are on him in a pack!' In his mouth the florid simile sounded natural enough but Tim, who was hypersensitive concerning the old man's dignity, snapped at him.

‘Then we'll have to dig in and live it down, because there's nothing else we can do.'

‘My boy, that's easy enough to say.' Eustace was an odd mixture of despair and a sort of relish. ‘Wait until you see Julia's father's reaction. Wait until it touches you personally.'

‘But how is Tim concerned? What is it to do with him? He's not a Kinnit.'

Julia's intervention cut clean across everybody's private reservation. She made a terrifying picture of innocent recklessness, interested only in her love. Both older men turned to her beseechingly but Tim was not sidetracked. He put an arm round her and jerked her tightly to his side. ‘You be quiet,' he said. ‘We can't be bothered with all that any more, darling. We know all we need to know about me. Consider all that settled and done with. Now, if your father says you're to wait until you're twenty-one we'll have to wait and that's an end of it. We shall marry as soon as we can.'

Councillor Cornish hesitated. He seemed relieved to have found somebody of his own weight with whom to deal.

‘Do I understand that you can give Barry a complete alibi for the – the happening, whatever it is, upstairs?'

‘I am not giving him anything.' Tim had never looked more exactly a younger edition of the man before him. ‘I am simply confirming that I was with him while he was in this house tonight. He will confirm that he was with Julia and me. We alibi each other.
On this occasion his word is as good as mine. He has an identity. He told me so.'

The Councillor's eyes flickered under his fierce brows.

‘You know about that, do you? I was wondering what I was going to say to you and this young lady about that.' He hesitated. ‘Or if I was going to say anything at all.' There was a pause and presently he spoke with a rush. ‘He takes his papers very seriously,' he said, and it was as if he was speaking of some strange animal for which he was responsible but which he could never hope to understand. ‘They are the only aspect of Law and Order for which he seems to have any respect at all.'

‘He takes his identity seriously,' Tim said. ‘Naturally. It appears to be all he has.'

It was an extraordinary piece of conversation, momentous and completely enlightening to each participant and yet, to everybody else, almost casual.

Cornish looked at Tim anxiously.

‘How about yourself, Son?'

Timothy's glance fell on Julia's sleek head next his shoulder and wandered over to Eustace still sitting hunched and old in his chair. At length he met the Councillor's gaze.

‘I've got responsibilities,' he said seriously. ‘I'm all right.'

‘Mr. Timothy Kinnit?', Stockwell, appearing in the doorway, put the question sharply. He was excited and his habit of swinging on his light feet had never been more evident.

‘Here, Sergeant.'

‘I see.' Stockwell appraised him. He was behaving as if he felt the situation was a little too good to be true. ‘I have the Superintendent and my Chief Inspector coming along. They'll be here in a moment. Meanwhile I wonder if I could ask you to clear up a little question which has come up. I understand from my constable upstairs that you admitted in his presence that it was you who took the man Leach into Mr. Toberman's room?'

‘That's right. My fiancée and I took him upstairs with us when we heard the rumpus. We didn't know what else to do with him.'

‘I see, sir.' Stockwell was approaching a conclusion as it were
on tiptoe. ‘Then when you took him into Mr. Toberman's room it was the first time he'd been there, in your opinion.'

‘Of course. Doesn't he say so?'

‘That's exactly what he does say.'

Tim stood looking at the broad face with the half-triumphant grin on it.

‘What's the matter?' he demanded. ‘What are you getting at?,

‘You've given yourself away, young man, haven't you?' Stockwell, still a little disbelieving at such good fortune, took the plunge squarely, nevertheless. ‘It was you who put Mr. Toberman to bed, wasn't it? When he was too drunk to get there himself, let alone into a bag? That's the truth, isn't it?'

The inference, so direct and simple that its enormity became a matter for complicated investigation and endless legal argument before their very eyes, burst in the room like a bomb.

There was a long moment of appalled silence, broken in the end by a voice from the doorway behind the sergeant.

‘Oh well, if you're going to be silly and imagine Mr. Tim did it,' said Nanny Broome, irritably, ‘I suppose
I
shall have to tell the truth.'

As the sergeant turned slowly round to stare at her, Superintendent Luke's voice speaking to the constable on duty at the front door floated up to them from the hall below.

THE READING-LAMP ON
the desk in Eustace's study cast a small bright pool of light on the polished wood, and the reflected glow struck upwards on the faces of the earnest men who stood round it looking down at Mrs. Broome, who sat in the writing chair.

Luke was there and Campion, Munday, and Stockwell, a solid bunch of human heads intent and silent save for the occasional murmur of assent.

For once Nanny Broome had no illusions. She was frightened and completely in the picture. She had no time to be self-conscious.

‘We were nearly an hour I should think, me and Mr. Tim, getting him off.' Her voice was very quiet, almost a whisper, but she was keeping to the point remarkably well and they were all too experienced to distract her. ‘He'd been up and down, up and down, until he drove you crazy. But he dropped off at last and we tiptoed out into the passage and Mr. Tim went off downstairs to his young lady, and I waited about for a bit in case Mr. Basil woke again. I did one or two little jobs. I turned Mr. Tim's bed down and looked in on Mr. Eustace to see if he'd got everything, He was reading; he always does. Miss Alison had finished her bath; I could hear the waste running. And so I went across the hall to the other three rooms and saw Miss Julia's bed was all right. Mrs. Telpher wanted me to help her close her window which was stuck, and I did that and went next door to Miss Aich but I didn't go in.'

‘Did you attempt to?' Luke's tone was carefully lowered to match her own so that there was no physical interruption, as it were, to the flow of her thought.

‘Not really. I knocked and she said “All right, all right” in her way, so I thought: “very well”. And I didn't disturb her. Then I came back and listened at Mr. Basil's door. He was snoring quite regularly so I went and sat down on the window-bench at the end
of the passage and looked out into the street. I sat there for a long time. I often do. It's my seat. I'm not in the way because I'm behind the velvet curtains and the light is up the other end of the passage and doesn't really reach to where I am. I sat looking out at the police for a long time. I thought the plain-clothes chaps were just ordinary men hanging about for a while but presently, when they kept speaking to the copper in uniform and looking about as if they weren't doing it, I guessed who they were and I wondered if Miss Julia could have telephoned them after all.'

‘Why should she?'

‘Because I'd had my coat cut when I came in after seeing you, Mr. Luke. I told her we'd report it in the morning.'

‘Very well.' Luke was holding himself on a tight rein. ‘Then what happened?'

‘Nothing for a long time. I was wondering if I dare go to bed and leave those two young monkeys up downstairs. You can't really trust anybody at that age. It's not right to ask it of them. Then I heard someone and I peeked out through the curtains and saw a woman come along and go into Mr. Basil's room. I was so angry I could have smacked her because we'd only just got him to sleep, but there was no noise and after quite a few minutes she came out again and went back to her room, and I sat listening with my heart in my mouth because, I thought, “Well, if he's going to start all his tricks again it will be now that he'll begin.” There was no sound, though, and presently I got up and listened at his door and he was snoring.'